Cupcakes for Birthdays

These liners even say they're for parties on the packaging

I just got done with the poker-themed cupcakes I made for my brother's birthday this weekend. I'll post those later, but for now I have pictures of cupcakes I made for a birthday party last weekend. I hate showing up to any kind of occasion with empty hands, and this party was for a birthday, so I definitely needed to bake cupcakes.

Purple cookie dough

I've had these fun cupcake liners from Reynold's that I picked up in the grocery store near me a while ago. They're good to use in my parents' oven because they're not greaseproof, so they don't slip away from the cupcake, but are still more fun than basic white. There was some purple ones, and I baked cookie dough cupcakes in them and dyed the chocolate chip frosting light purple to match the liner. I also baked a dozen margarita cupcakes into the pink & green argyle wrappers.

Margarita cupcake - Matches the liner!

These cupcakes were a pretty big hit at the party. I'm excited to see if Reynold's or any other supermarket brand puts out more decorative liners in the future.

Box of cupcakes, ready to go to the party

Extremely Busy Weekend!

This weekend I had 3 orders to complete - a surprise 30th birthday that was fiesta-themed, a friend's niece's 2nd birthday, and a coworker's daughter's birthday. The fiesta needed 120 cupcakes in an assortment of margarita, marble, and vanilla with coconut. In addition to all those cupcakes, they also had me do a fondant-covered cake to go on the top tier of the cupcake stand! The 2nd birthday party was just 2 dozen mini rainbow cupcakes, and the coworker's order was 80 cupcake truffles. I have a problem with time management when it comes to baking as it is, so it is no surprise I ran into trouble this weekend.

I thought I was on a good track. In fact, I had planned on waking up Saturday morning, doing the cupcakes, dropping off Morgan's order of minis, getting a mother's day gift and maybe even taking a nap before I had to drop off the fiesta order in Hoboken (I was baking in Toms River). I was so ambitious with my time that I probably even thought it was feasible to solve world peace in the extra time between the orders and delivery. I was so, so very wrong. World peace will probably have to wait until next weekend.

The assembled fiesta order. I was really proud of this!

Around 12:00 pm on Saturday, I started to get panicky and think I was not going to finish in time. I called my mom who was in Philly picking up my sister at least twice crying. I was having a major problem with the margarita cupcakes. The recipe I had was really difficult to follow and for some reason grouped together the frosting & cupcake ingredients and I kept adding the wrong things or the wrong amounts. Hence, 2 batches of cupcakes in the trash before I got a good one...hours later.

Close-up of the cake

At about 1:30 pm, my parents came back home, and I could have dropped to the ground crying tears of joy that I had someone to help me. I seriously would have never finished on time if my mom didn't come home. Kate was also a supreme baking assistant, helping me out both Friday night and Saturday by going out of her way to pick up ingredients for me and then driving me up to Hoboken to help me unload the cupcakes. My sister Melissa was clutch as well and ran to Michael's to grab me more cupcake liners being as I had gone through way more than I was anticipating.

By some miracle, I ended up finishing approximately 3:50 (I needed to get in the car to have them there by 4:00), quickly took a shower (which was for the best of everyone who was going to see me), and loaded up Kate's car with the 6 boxes of cupcakes (oh yeah, did I mention I made an extra 2 dozen of 2 completely separate kinds for a friend's party I was going to??), the cake, stand, 36 personalized individual cupcake take-home boxes, and my suitcase I need for when I go to Australia in two weeks. I really did not calm down until about 6 beers into the party I attended that night.

Individual take-home boxes for cupcakes

The drop off of all the cupcakes went so well. Everyone seemed really happy with them and everything made it there in one piece! I LOVED the idea to have the individual boxes. I hope someone else in the future wants to do that as well.

Sunday, I went back down to Toms River for Mother's Day and made the 80 cupcake truffles. I gave my baking intern (my mom) the night off from washing dishes, a fair Mother's Day gift I thought. I dropped those off today and am happy to be done baking at least for a few days. I never thought I'd say this, but I need a tiny break from cupcakes...at least until the next whim strikes me!

Cupcake Truffles - the blue were vanilla & pink were strawberry

Again, thank you SO much to everyone who helped out this weekend. This was the biggest batch of cupcakes I've done to date and it took just about every resource and bit of emotional support to make it happen.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

I'm starting to sense a theme here this week with my cupcakes...alcohol. Hmm... Tomorrow's Cinco de Mayo and I have an order this weekend that includes 3 dozen margarita cupcakes. Being as I've never tested my margarita recipe before, I felt this was the perfect opportunity. Now I'm going to push these off on my coworkers tomorrow.


After getting out of work late, I ran around Hoboken picking things up for these cupcakes - limes and tequila. I found the tiniest, cutest bottle of Patron and had to have it even though it was twice the cost of Jose Cuervo (but still only $5). Usually I hate tequila (it is my absolute least favorite shot at a bar), but I love the idea of these cupcakes.

Sugars & salt before I mixed them

The cupcake is a lime cake, covered with the tequila lime frosting and rimmed with combination sparkling sugars and course salt. After downing a whole box of Kraft mac & cheese when I got home, I'm not hungry enough to want to eat cupcakes now, so I'll have to wait until tomorrow for an official cupcake review.

Cupcake + Booze = True Cinco de Mayo Love